Always honest. Never serious.

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(not so) Common Sense

Generally speaking, humans are highly evolved. As far as brains go, we are at the top of the evolutionary ladder.

As such, one would assume that it would be very difficult to fool us. We would never fall for media trickery, pseudo-science, or political dishonesty. Right?

(Awkward pause…)

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling slightly red-faced right now.

The somewhat embarrassing truth is, for such a highly evolved species, we are quite gullible. We accept things as fact with very little context. Headlines and memes are used to support our opinions as opposed to genuine research and inquiry. We accept reporting from obviously biased news sources.

Worst of all, we put our faith in our government, and its agencies, thinking they have our best interests in mind when creating policies and regulations.

Spoiler alert: they don’t.

I live in West Virginia, a beautiful state full of good -hearted people. It is also a state full of poor, unemployed, struggling people. Our primary industry, coal, is dying, if not dead. Most unfortunately, we are leading the nation in the opioid epidemic.

This beautiful state has been poisoned. First is was Oxycontin and all of its cousins. Now, because pills became so expensive, heroin has made a comeback. The most infuriating aspect of all of this is that the drugs made their way into West Virginia on a prescription form.

We all sat here and watched it happen. We enabled. We participated. Why? Because these were FDA approved drugs. The government, in other words, told us to go ahead and take these drugs. They handed us that scary paper with all of the warnings and indications and sent us on our way.

We see how that turned out.

I’m not writing about the opioid epidemic, although I certainly could. I’m really not even writing about government corruption or the prescription pill pandemic in this country.

I’m writing because “we the people” are swallowing something infinitely worse than a prescription painkiller.

We are swallowing a load of crap.

We are swallowing the belief that the FDA is acting in the best interest of the people of this state and, indeed, this entire country. We have convinced ourselves the government knows what is best for us. We are errant schoolchildren who need Big Daddy to correct us upon our path and set us right.

Is that what this country was founded upon? The need of constant government interference? Think about it–they tell us what to feed our children, what to let them watch, they tell us what to eat and what to think and, of course, how to medicate ourselves. They even tell us where we can and cannot buy our milk. (Think I’m kidding? Do a little research into legislation concerning raw milk.)

I’m as guilty as everyone else. Like us all, I didn’t so much agree to these things as just passively let them happen, but at the end of the road, the mode of travel is somewhat irrelevant, wouldn’t you say?

And so here we are.

Now my interest is slightly more than passive. We are fighting epilepsy in this house, and when I say fighting it, baby, I mean fighting. We knock it down, it gets back up, more determined and sadistic than before. I’m afraid we’re losing. I don’t know what comes next. Every day I feel like I’m running out of options.

Can I count on my government to help me? Another spoiler: no.

The sad fact is just the opposite. My government is opposing me. It is trying to keep me down and keep me from fighting for my daughter. It seems to want epilepsy to win. Of course no individual member of any government would admit to such a thing, but The Grandparents taught me that truth lies in the actions of a person, not the words.

The actions of the people in the government of my state and the whole country tell me a story that makes me sick.

It’s a story of men and women in positions of power groveling to big business, particularly Big Pharma, and I mean groveling, practically licking the soles of their filthy shoes, just to keep the dollars rolling in. Our government is run by lobbyists and money. All intentions of those first Americans who fled from tyranny are gone.

And we have allowed it to happen.

It isn’t too late to start changing things. Passivity needs to come to an end. That’s it in a nutshell. We need to vote, we need to call, we need to write, we need to speak!! We need to stop sitting back and waiting for other people to fight our fights and fix our problems. We need to have our own backs.

I’m going to keep fighting for my daughter. I’m going to fight for the right to treat her epilepsy with a plant if need be, regardless of the stigma that plant has gained because of a media campaign so many years ago. I’m going to use my highly evolved brain and science and logic rather than the media and government to make my decisions. I should have that right. So many fought and died to give me that right, and I intend to make sure their sacrifice was not in vain.

Won’t you join me?

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This is the first in my series about medical marijuana. It started as one post, but I found that there is just too much information to share in a single shot. Consider this as the introduction. Please share, and stay tuned!